Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy

Industry

Kirstene Hair: To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that the Industrial Strategy takes account of the importance of traditional industries to local areas.

Richard Harrington: The Industrial Strategy ensures every place, including areas where traditional industries are located, realises its full economic potential. We are working in partnership with local areas to agree a Local Industrial Strategy with every area of England by early 2020, with support for places in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland that want one. Local Industrial Strategies will provide distinctive and long-term visions of how specific places can maximise their contribution to UK productivity, building on existing local strengths and capitalising on the opportunities of the future.

Cabinet Office

Government Departments: Billing

James Frith: To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what monitoring processes the Government uses to check that main contractors pay sub-contractors within 30 days.

Oliver Dowden: The Public Contract Regulations require public sector buyers to pay their suppliers within 30 days and require these payment terms to be passed down the supply chain. Should circumstances of non-compliance arise, we encourage sub-contractors to contact the Public Procurement Review Service in the Cabinet Office who will investigate. The service has helped suppliers reclaim over £5 million in late payments.A new prompt payment initiative to ensure all Government suppliers and subcontractors benefit from being paid on time, will come into force in Autumn 2019. Companies who fail to demonstrate prompt payment to their suppliers face being prevented from winning government contracts. This move will promote a healthy and diverse marketplace of companies providing public services.

Electronic Government: Proof of Identity

Jo Platt: To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what the total cost to the public purse was of verifying user identities through Gov.UK Verify for the purpose of accessing services provided by each Department in the last financial year; and how many total users were verified in that period.

Oliver Dowden: The cost of verifying user identities through GOV.UK Verify is the amount paid to the GOV.UK Verify private sector identity providers. Details of the amounts paid to the identity providers for the user identities they create is commercially sensitive information and cannot be released.The number of GOV.UK Verify accounts (historic and current) is published on the GOV.UK website and is regularly updated.

Civil Service: Secondment

Darren Jones: To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, pursuant to the Answer of 23 November 2018 to Question 191484 on Civil Service: Secondment, whether the Civil Service collects data on the number of secondees from the private sector to the civil service.

Oliver Dowden: As part of the Civil Service Statistics collection, figures are collected on the number of secondees from outside the Civil Service, however this does not distinguish between secondees from the private sector and the wider public sector.